Lottery Four Time Winner: Too Good To Be True?
‘Lucky’ woman who won the lottery four times outed as Stanford University statistics Ph.D. Was she really lucky or is there more to it?
Joan R. Ginther, 63, from Texas, has been labeled one of the luckiest women in the world after four lottery wins. She has won four lottery prizes since 1993.
But now that lottery luck is being called into question. It has been stated that winning the lottery four times is more than just a coincidental spell of good fortune.
The odds of this has been calculated at one in eighteen septillions. Luck like that could only come once every quadrillion years, virtually impossible.
Although Ms. Ginther now lives in Las Vegas, she won all four of her lotteries in Texas.
The four lottery wins
Ms. Ginther won four lots of vast sums on lottery scratch cards, half of which were bought at the same mini mart.
- First, she won $5.4 million.
- A decade later, she won $2million.
- Then, two years later $3million.
- In the summer of 2010, she hit a $10million jackpot.
Why such a ‘lucky’ run?
Consequently, Harper’s reporter Nathanial Rich recently wrote an article about Ms Ginther, which calls the validity of her ‘luck’ into question.
First, he points out, Ms. Ginther is a former math professor with a Ph.D. from Stanford University specializing in statistics.
A professor at the Institute for the Study of Gambling & Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Mr Rich: ‘When something this unlikely happens in a casino, you arrest ‘em first and ask questions later.’
Mr. Rich details the myriad ways in which Ms. Ginther could have gamed the system – including the fact that she may have figured out the algorithm that determines where a winner is placed in each run of scratch-off tickets.
As a result, it wouldn’t be difficult to determine where the tickets would be shipped, as the shipping schedule is apparently fixed, and there were a few sources she could have found it out from.
Furthermore, the residents of Bishop, Texas, seem to believe God was behind it all.
The Texas Lottery Commission told Mr. Rich that Ms. Ginther must have been ‘born under a lucky star’, and that they don’t suspect foul play.
